Architect Zaha Hadid chosen by the City of Miami Beach to design its newest parking garage at Collins Park, has released the first renderings of her plan for the garage. Collins Park, a neighborhood that’s home to the Miami City Ballet, the Bass Museum, the City Library as well as the Gansevoort, W and Setai luxury hotels is also just blocks away from the Miami Beach Convention Center, the Frank Gehry -designed New World Center and the popular automobile-free Lincoln Road Mall.

“The city [of Miami Beach] commissioned several studies for how to improve infrastructure and residential mobility,” Hadid notes on her website. “One of the conclusions was to provide additional parking both strategically and creatively.” The garage will be built on two existing surface parking lots, behind the Miami Beach Library and the Miami City Ballet, crossing above Liberty Avenue, which will become a pedestrian walkway for the width of that block. A large covered plaza to the east of the new pedestrian street and 20,000 square feet of retail to the west are to be supported by five levels of parking.

Consistently sought-after, Hadid was the architect of the Aquatic Center for the 2012 London Olympics, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and has designed major building structures for BMW and around the world in Barcelona, Abu Dhabi and Cardiff, England. Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize – the profession’s highest honor – joins the growing list of world renowned architects who have gained international attention and are referred to as “Starchitects,” who have designed and overseen construction of new parking garages in the City of Miami Beach.

Parking garages on Miami Beach have become more than a group of parking spaces. Some have become destinations within themselves and have attained iconic status. In a city that hosts the biggest art fair in the world and where every building has the potential to be a work of art, Hadid’s garage and those of other world recognized architects, have fit in brilliantly in a creatively sophisticated environment like Miami Beach.

Miami Beach’s parking garages have received world-wide media attention and have become tourist attractions themselves. They include the Frank-Gehry designed, city-owned, Pennsylvania Avenue Garage; Herzog de Meuron’s minimalist, edgy space at 1111 Lincoln Road; Arquitectonica’s Ballet Valet Garage at 7th Street and Collins Avenue as well as their newest design in Sunset Harbour, which is currently under construction; Enrique Norton’s newly designed parking garage at 16th Street and Drexel Avenue; and Perkins and Will’s recent City Center Garage Project at 18th Street and Meridian Avenue. Hadid’s new design is expected to continue to raise the bar for garages worldwide. The City of Miami Beach is currently working with Hadid to determine commencement dates for the garage’s construction.